


days like television

by lovereact



Category: Chainsaw Man (Manga)
Genre: Domestic, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied Slash, Manga Spoilers, pre-chapter 73
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29232561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovereact/pseuds/lovereact
Summary: Occasionally growing a chainsaw for a head has made him realize he can adapt to pretty much anything.
Relationships: Angel Devil/Hayakawa Aki, Denji & Hayakawa Aki, Denji & Hayakawa Aki & Power, Denji & Power (Chainsaw Man)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 157





	days like television

**Author's Note:**

> I messed with the timeline of chapters 53-73 a bit so our trio stays together longer and Angel is discharged from the hospital earlier.

These days, Denji finds himself greeting every morning with a face full of cat fur. 

Nyako has taken a liking to sleeping in his room, and she’s got a strict routine that he’s expected to follow. Breakfast doesn’t begin at the reasonable time after Aki doles out their portions, but rather whenever Nyako demands it, usually before the sun has peaked past the horizon and always when Denji is dead asleep. 

Her favorite method of waking him used to be persistent yowling, but recently she’s adopted a new strategy—settling the length of her pudgy stomach over his head and cutting off his air supply. 

It’s devious but effective, and as Denji’s body kicks into fight or flight from lack of oxygen, he can’t help but think they’ve raised a spoiled brat.

Power claims that’s how all pets are, but Pochita never refused the pathetic scraps of food Denji managed to scrounge up for their sporadic meal times. Nyako is the odd one for being a normal cat with normal needs.

It’s a good thing Denji is “nothing if not adaptable,” a phrase Aki used once that he’s since latched onto. Whether Aki meant it as an insult or not is irrelevant.

Occasionally growing a chainsaw for a head has made him realize he can adapt to pretty much anything. The hardest part of it all was learning to live with other people, and Denji sort of manages that. What difference does a daily smothering make in the grand scheme of things? 

He’s gotten used to pulling a purring Nyako from his face so he can trudge to the kitchen and open a can of cat food. It’s considered one of his chores anyway—and yeah, they have a chore chart now. 

That was all Aki, of course. Fed up with the stacks of unwashed dishes and dirty clothes strewn across the living room floor, he’d cooked and then withheld a delicious hotpot dinner until Denji and Power both agreed to work out a schedule. They’d decided to cycle cleaning throughout the week and set Saturday as laundry day. That way there was no excuse for Power to walk around in her underwear under the guise of not having anything to wear. It was her idea that the penalty for missing a chore be losing a finger, and Aki added it to the chart like that wasn’t something he’d ever have to worry about. 

Denji didn’t want to give either of his housemates the satisfaction, so he’d gotten used to doing chores. 

Begrudgingly. 

Make no mistake—he can get used to anything, but he doesn’t have to like it. He’s learned to tolerate doing dishes like he tolerates the acrid smell of second-hand smoke filling his lungs whenever Aki feels like having a cig indoors. Bad smells never bothered him when he’d lived in poverty, but the weight of smoke in particular is stomach-turning. 

As he’s forced to crack open a window and watch Nyako slink a similar retreat onto the sill, Denji considers how all this luxury has possibly made him a bit spoiled too. 

After all, not everything he grows accustomed to is outright shitty. 

For all her annoying living habits, Power proves to be a low-maintenance roommate. Her moods fluctuate so wildly, if she finds anything to complain about in the first place, she’s over it by the next turn of the clock. She also takes bizarre pride in completing her chores, dragging him or Aki around the apartment to boast of what a good job she’s done. 

She pouts if they don’t praise her enough—but whatever. Denji is used to it. 

Her constant chatter becomes less annoying the more time they spend together, until he realizes the apartment is _too_ quiet on the rare occasion she’s not there. The sound of her exchanging meows with Nyako reminds him he’s home, and even her cackling laugh soon registers as comforting background noise. 

Similarly, Denji now recognizes the shifts in Aki’s tone well enough to know if he’s actually in trouble, versus if Aki is scolding him for the sake of propriety. Denji watches for other tells when pulling pranks with Power—an indulgent shake of the head and a tug at the corner of Aki’s lips means they’re in the clear. 

It's easy to pinpoint exactly what shade of melancholy he’s drifted into just by counting the number of consecutive cigarettes he pulls from the pack. Two is contemplative—four, somber. Anything past that means they’ll have to arrange for takeout that night. 

Aki is consistent, and when he starts drifting in and out of rooms like he’s lost something, his fingers trailing the walls as if navigating in the dark, Denji knows he’s actually looking for a distraction. In those moments, Denji makes an effort to act extra obnoxious, riling Power up in turn until Aki has no choice but to pay attention to them and forget whatever bad memory he’d gotten hung up on. 

Gathering facts about the people he lives with isn’t a conscious choice. It’s instinctual, like how his body expects food on the regular. He’d put up with a constant state of starvation for his entire adolescence, doing odd jobs on an empty stomach like it was nothing. Now it ruins his entire day if he doesn’t get at least three meals. What’s crazier, his body punishes him when he takes advantage of the unrestricted access to food.

Aki’s cooking is good. So good in fact, that for a large span of time, Denji is constantly shifting into “eat as much as possible” mode, left over from when food was scarce. This results in several post-meal puke sessions, made all the more miserable because Denji’s body is pretty much invincible, right? He’d thought whatever devils were made out of meant they were above this shit. Ending up with his face inside a toilet bowl has forced him to rethink his previous assumptions. 

It sucks waiting for his body to adjust alongside his brain, but Power and Aki do their best to make it more bearable. The first time Power kneels beside him on the cold tile, he’s sure she’s there to laugh at his misery—it wouldn't be the first time. He’s bewildered when instead, she places both palms on his back and rubs them vigorously up and down in what must be her version of a soothing caress. She doesn’t laugh or even complain, and only when his stomach is empty and he’s slumped against the wall in exhaustion does she get up and fetch Aki, who steps into the bathroom with a soldier's solemnity to deposit a mug of hot tea into Denji’s hands. 

It happens enough times where Denji doesn’t bother to ask questions, filing it away as one of those things that fits into an unnamed category of half shitty, half not so shitty—like movie nights. 

The three of them have vastly different tastes, Aki with his mind-numbing art house flicks and Power’s penchant for talking animal movies made for literal children. Denji doesn’t know what genre he likes most, but it’s definitely not either of those. 

It’s an unspoken rule that they have to watch each one all the way through. Aki is the type to sit in complete silence because talking “ruins the integrity of the film,” whatever that means, and Denji’s running commentary annoys him to no end. 

Denji and Power make bets each time on how long it’ll take him to snap or huff out a laugh.

On the rare occasion it’s Denji’s turn to choose, he splits the difference and puts on something from the best seller section at the video store. With this method, they all have to suffer through garbage, but occasionally he’ll stumble across a good movie—one he doesn’t mind staying quiet for. He watches Aki and Power rather than the television screen, their rapt attention filling him with an odd sense of pride. 

Denji categorizes those nights as not so shitty.

After a while, he gets so used to the good and bad mundanities of domestic living **,** he can’t even imagine what a change in routine would look like. 

Then they go to Hell, and instead of cat fur, Denji is more often violently jerked awake to the sound of Power’s screams. 

She’s more dependent than ever before, clinging to Denji at all times like an extra limb. When the sun begins to set outside their windows, she startles at every sound, working herself into a panic while her nails dig half-moon circles into his arms that he’s sure would leave permanent scars were he fully human.

Looking after her turns out to be even more work than getting up at the crack of dawn to feed Nyako—but for some reason, Denji can’t bring himself to resent her for it. 

He takes on the responsibility of comforting her with a resilience he never knew he had, going as far as holding her hand each night while she struggles to calm down enough to fall asleep. 

Power isn’t the only one Denji has to keep an eye on. 

At first, he doesn’t notice the way Aki will sometimes stop cold in the middle of cutting vegetables, gripping the knife handle hard enough to whiten his knuckles as a shudder of something awful passes through his body. He’s good at hiding it, and when Denji catches the tail end of one of these attacks, Aki brushes it off like it’s nothing. 

It’s only after Aki suddenly sinks to the floor in the middle of a conversation, his hand clutching at the place where his missing arm wouldn’t reattach, that Denji realizes he’s overlooked something important. 

Phantom limb syndrome, Aki explains, is an ongoing side effect of losing a limb wherein the brain gets mixed signals from the area of severance and translates them in the only way it knows how—as pain. He rambles off some more medical science that goes completely over Denji’s head, but from what he can gather, this affliction is severe, unavoidable, and sometimes life long. There’s no cure, but as with other chronic conditions, the goal is learning to manage it the best you can. 

The thought of Aki suffering in silence makes Denji want to deck him as much as it makes him want to find a solution for his pain. He juggles these warring impulses until Aki clenches his jaw and looks away—and Denji understands that Aki won’t spend any extra energy looking after himself by choice. 

So Denji and Power force him to.

They keep a hot pack in the cabinet above the microwave, and when Aki shows even the slightest sign of falling under the grip of pain, they warm it up and force him to sit with it pressed to the aching muscle. They know it’s particularly bad when Aki doesn’t bother hiding how much it hurts, and in those moments they take turns massaging his shoulder. 

Aki refuses to speak with them during, so Denji and Power talk to each other, treating the situation like it’s something they’ve always done. 

Denji doesn’t comment on Aki’s silence. He’s come to understand that there are some things they don't need to say aloud. When you’ve lived with a person long enough, you can share a thought with just a gesture, or pick up on ideas that you can't put into words 

Power doesn't need to tell him she appreciates his company on her bad nights. Likewise, he doesn’t need to voice why he doesn’t mind taking care of her. He couldn’t even if he tried. 

And when Denji questions Aki on why he’s wearing a glove indoors, Aki only has to shoot a single warning look to shut him up. 

Later that night, Aki welcomes the Angel Devil into their apartment. 

One arm between the two of them—Denji thinks that's pretty funny, but he doesn’t say so. Instead, he hangs back as Power slinks around their guest like she’s investigating a new play thing. 

Angel endures her attention for a short time, then flicks Denji a cool look and tucks his wings in, settling on the couch without a word. 

Aki hovers in the foyer, glancing between the three of them like he’s waiting for a fight to break out. It’s such a dumb look on him that Denji takes it upon himself to make the first move. 

He plops down on the arm rest and asks Angel outright if he’s ever tried using the thing floating above his head as a frisbee. 

Angel rolls his eyes and informs Denji that his halo is sharp enough to slice through metal. 

“Sounds like a challenge,” Denji shoots back, and he’s sure Aki’s surprise mirrors his own when the corner of Angel’s mouth lifts into a smirk. 

“By all means, be my guest,” he says, inclining his head in invitation. 

Denji moves to take Angel up on his offer, but Aki comes back to himself and catches Denji’s hand in a tight hold. He then spends several minutes lecturing them both on how hard it is to get blood stains out of upholstery. 

The rest of the night is...well, it’s still weird. But Aki so obviously wants it not to be that they all pretend for his sake. While he cooks dinner, Denji and Power keep their surprise guest company. 

Angel is surprisingly talkative when prompted, though he always seems to veer their conversations into the morose. At one point, he stares glumly at Nyako snoozing on the counter and warns them to watch her closely. 

“Cats don’t actually have nine lives,” he remarks, “I learned that the hard way.” 

Denji doesn’t say anything when Aki lays out enough food to feed a small army, all special dishes that he’d never cook for Power or Denji even if they begged. He digs in without a word, and it’s a good thing his mouth is stuffed, otherwise he’d be gaping at the way Aki carefully feeds Angel, every so often lifting a glass of water to his lips.

They follow up dinner with ice cream—which must be Angel’s favorite as Aki spoons him two extra helpings—and then Power is tugging at Denji’s arm, urging him to come take a bath with her. 

He relents under the assumption that Angel will be gone by the time they’re done washing up. But about half an hour later, Denji exits the bathroom toweling off his hair to find Angel is still there, sitting close to Aki. They’re angled towards each other, Aki’s arm thrown over the back of the couch and the fabric of his long sleeve shirt brushing the tops of Angel’s wings. 

They both look up at Denji when he enters the room. Angel’s expression appears bored as usual, but Aki’s is strange, his face relaxed in an unfamiliar way. 

Denji opens his mouth, then decides better. 

Aki stands, helping Angel up with a steady gloved hand to his back, and it takes everything Denji has in him to stay quiet as Aki mumbles an awkward goodnight, shepherding Angel down the hall and into his room. 

Denji immediately makes up an excuse to run to the convenience store so he can check the balcony outside Aki’s room from street level. Sure enough, Aki and Angel are leaning up against the railing, heads inclined as if they’re speaking in low tones. 

Denji watches Aki light himself a cigarette. He offers the box to Angel, who says something that actually makes Aki laugh, the sound ringing clear even from a distance. Placing a second cigarette in Angel’s mouth, Aki holds his own steady between two fingers, bending forward to meet the smoldering end to Angel’s unlit one. A pinpoint glow of orange flares in the dark space between their faces like a morning star. 

Denji turns away, stuffs his hands in his empty pockets, and decides he’ll swing by the convenience store after all. 

By the time he gets back, Angel is gone. 

Aki is once again sitting on the couch, staring at the blank TV screen with a stupid smile on his face, and Denji has to say _something_. 

It turns out Aki can punch just as hard with one arm as with two. 

After that, Denji pays closer attention. Without intending, he starts to notice the way Aki sometimes looks at him and Power—though he can’t focus long enough to figure out what those looks mean. They’re gentle and wistful in a way that makes Denji want to pull at Aki’s cheeks and mold a better expression. 

He tries it once, but that puts Aki in a foul mood for hours so he doesn’t do it again. 

Things get even more confusing on a night where they’re all sprawled out on the carpet. The movie Aki puts on is so boring it knocks Power out in minutes, her head pillowed in the crook of Denji’s arm. He starts drifting off soon after. 

It happens as he’s on the verge of sleep. His mind is muddled to the world around him, but for a second, he imagines he feels Aki place an ear to his chest. 

Denji is sure he dreamt it until he walks in on Aki in the same position over a napping Power, his cheek pressed to her collarbone and his brows furrowed in concentration. 

Denji backs out of the room and thinks there’s something he’s missing here. 

The next time Aki is in the kitchen, Denji tests a theory, loudly announcing that he’s going to take a nap before stretching out on the couch. He feigns sleep long enough to rethink his entire strategy—when he finally hears Aki pause his task and tread softly across the room. 

Denji struggles to keep a straight face as Aki kneels beside the couch and lowers an ear to his chest, keeping it there much too long for someone trying not to get caught. Eventually, he heaves a great sigh and pulls away, returning to the kitchen like he’d never left. 

So, yeah. There’s the whole listening to their heartbeats thing. 

Another quirk to add onto the list of Aki behavior that Denji doesn’t understand but has to accept. 

Aki is still Aki. He still shouts at them when they break things, still cooks their meals and tolerates their company—though, maybe tolerates isn’t the right word anymore. 

Denji is flipping through the pages of a porno mag when one of the ads catches his eye. A smiling woman in a bikini holds up a machine with a handle on top and an open space in the middle. He thinks it might be some crazy sex thing, but he has Power read the description, and she tells him it’s for making a dessert called “shaved ice.” 

Neither of them know what that is, but the ad makes it sound like the best thing ever—

“—and it can be ours for the low price of two-thousand yen!” Power shouts, smacking the magazine against his arm.

Denji tears out the ad and goes to pester Aki into buying it for them. 

Aki bitches and moans about wasting money on useless shit, but after getting it out of his system, he puts down the laundry he was folding and snatches the page from Denji’s hand, dialing the number with a sour expression. He’s curt over the phone, reading off his credit card details like someone has a gun to his head. Denji wishes he could see the face of the unlucky salesperson on the other line. 

“Denji.” Aki says, and Denji tilts his head before realizing he’s not being spoken to. Aki pauses, and then directs a puzzled frown his way. “Last name?” 

Denji shrugs. 

Aki blinks at him, the furrow between his brow smoothing as if in stunned realization. After a bizarre stretch of silence, he readjusts his hold on the handset and glances away, mumbling out, “Hayakawa. Hayakawa Denji.”

When he eventually hangs up, his gaze stays trained on the far wall like he’s lost in thought. Denji decides not to test his luck by sticking around, but Aki catches his wrist as he goes to leave. 

“What?” Denji grumbles. “I said thank you, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t, actually,” Aki replies dryly, but there’s no real reproval in his tone. “That’s not—just hold on a minute.” 

His faltering words give Denji pause. He shakes off Aki’s hand but stays put. 

“Listen,” Aki begins, messing with the pile of clothes he’d left aside. He unfolds a shirt, holds it out, and then folds it again, all the while not meeting Denji’s eye. “If you or Power ever needed— If for some reason I wasn’t here...and you needed something for documents…” 

“Why wouldn’t you be here?” Denji asks, and thinks of their work. “If you’re traveling we can call you.” 

Aki turns to him then, something unreadable in his thousand-yard stare. 

It’s like facing a door labeled, “do not open.” 

Aki sighs and looks away. “Forget it.” 

And Denji does forget—until a fews days later when a package arrives at their doorstep postmarked to one Hayakawa Denji.

Placing the box on the living room table, he studies the characters of his given name, covering and uncovering them with his palm. He’d never noticed how incomplete they looked without a surname to go before. The sight turns rusty gears in his head, almost like he’s on the verge of understanding an important truth. 

Power bowls him over in her excitement before he comes to a conclusion. 

They leave the setup to Aki, who confiscates the shaved ice maker and reads the instructions with the two of them hovering over his shoulder. It turns out to be very simple, just a matter of filling the upper compartment with ice and turning the lever. The machine wobbles below Aki’s hand, so Denji holds it steady, watching with fascination as snow-like flakes collect in the bowl underneath. The novelty wears off a little when he dips a finger in to taste and finds it flavorless like regular ice, but Aki bats his hand away and pulls out a bottle of blue liquid. 

“Flavor syrup,” he says, scanning the label. “Hawaiian Blast—what’s that supposed to be?” 

Whatever it is, it tastes delicious drizzled over the ice flakes, sweet and refreshing like no dessert Denji has ever had. 

Power gobbles up the first serving faster than Aki can make more, and he’s unsympathetic to the excruciating brain freeze that earns her. 

She flicks the lever and turns to Denji with a conspiratorial grin. “Think it would work with blood?” 

“Great idea,” Aki says, chin in hand. “Why not make this perfectly innocent activity fucked up and evil?” 

Power sticks her vibrant blue tongue out at him. 

Denji hates getting cut open on principle, so he appeases her by mashing up strawberries with condensed milk into a gory looking topping they can all enjoy. Even Nyako gets to lick a drop off his finger. 

Aki takes his first bite and gazes into his bowl like it’s a window into a far off time and place. “I haven’t had this since I was a kid.”

 _“Old man_ ,” Denji snickers. 

Power echoes him at double the volume, falling back and kicking her legs in the air. The motion disturbs Nyako, who clambers off her lap and settles at Aki’s feet

“Oh, shut it,” Aki says, but the hint of a smile softens his tone into fondness. He scratches at Nyako’s ear. “At least you’re on my side.” 

Shaken by her cat’s betrayal, Power stammers out, “‘Tis only pity! Nyako feels nothing but pity for humans, just like her master!” 

“Is that so?” Aki raises a brow and—to Power’s great dismay—makes a show of lifting Nyako into his lap. “Lucky us then.”

“Yeah,” Denji says, a brilliant grin working its way onto his face. “Lucky us.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i read the manga in one sitting and immediately sped through every stage of grief so this fic is how i'm coping. hayakawa family.....i care them.....we needed at least 10 more chapters covering their home life!! also aki and angel make me think thoughts...their dynamic is so interesting and i'd love to explore it further someday 
> 
> thanks for reading! you can find me over at my [tumblr](https://sodapill.tumblr.com/).
> 
> (title lifted from "the leanover" by life without buildings)


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